Vice mayor, councilman at odds over committee snub

As the Metro Council starts the final year of the current term, Councilman Charlie Tygard and Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors are feuding like a player left on the bench and a coach wanting a different lineup on the field.

And the sometimes overheated rhetoric has spilled out of the locker room, making it sound like much more is somehow at stake.

When Neighbors sent the 40 council members their committee assignments for the 2014-15 year Wednesday morning, Tygard wasn’t included on the Budget & Finance Committee, where the veteran councilman has been a mainstay. Tygard apparently knew this would happen, and in a letter Neighbors sent with the assignments, she acknowledged — without naming him — that the decision had made him unhappy.

And the way he was expressing his unhappiness made her pretty unhappy, too.

Neighbors said there was “a rumor floating around” that one council member planned to boycott the Budget & Finance Committee meetings (council members who aren’t on a committee can still participate in meetings, though they can’t vote) and ask all his questions during full council sessions.

Neighbors has made a point of trying to keep council meetings moving by encouraging committee meetings as the place for “in-depth discussion of issues.” That, she wrote, has brought the council “a higher level of credibility.”

“If the rumors are true and these threats were acted upon, such behavior would show a lack of respect for our committee process and the Council as a whole,” she wrote. “I want to note that this council member did not contact me directly to discuss the situation before reportedly making these threatening statements to other council members, the Mayor’s staff and other Metro employees.”

Neighbors, using language that could make it seem like something much more dangerous than a few tough questions was on the line, said it was “difficult to imagine” a council member wanting to make everyone else’s lives “so unpleasant due to a committee assignment and being upset with the Vice Mayor.”

Tygard has never been one to back down from a fight, and he was true to form in an email he sent back to Neighbors and copied to the rest of the council. It got to the point quickly: “Just so every Council Member understands that this letter is referring to me, I want to address your comments.”

Tygard then said he planned to attend meetings of the committees Neighbors assigned him to and ask questions about any other legislation on the council floor.

“I do intend to ask any and all pertinent questions I feel are necessary before spending one dime of taxpayer money,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by The Tennessean. “Since I am no longer serving on that committee, I will ask these questions during the Council meeting, if necessary.”

The at-large councilman said he was “frankly taken aback” by his assignments after Neighbors, the vice mayor since 2007, regularly granted his request to serve on the budget panel for the past seven years.

“It is certainly your prerogative to appoint members of committees as you (deem) proper,” he wrote. “It is my prerogative to ask any and all questions relating to items on the agenda.”

And it will be everyone else’s prerogative to expect sparks to fly the the next time the full council meets Sept. 9.